Okay so this whole Mark Arling thing started because I was getting totally fed up with manually sorting my notes. Like, seriously fed up. You know how it is – stuff scattered everywhere, different formats, impossible to find anything. Complete chaos.
Someone mentioned this “Mark Arling” concept online – basically a way to auto-organize a big pile of markdown files. Sounded way too good to be true. But hey, I was desperate. Figured, why not give it a shot? Worst case, I waste an hour.
The Absolute Mess I Was Starting With
I dumped all my random notes into one folder. We’re talking:
- TXT files from way back when.
- DOCX files people emailed me.
- A ton of messy markdown files with weird names.
- Even some PDFs I’d saved notes into.
It was a total disaster zone. Just opening the folder made me sigh.
Trying to Get the Stupid Thing Working
First, I needed this script they talked about. Found this repo after digging around. Downloaded it. Then came the fun part: making it actually run on my machine.
Opened up my command line thingy. Typed the command they said to use. Bang! Error message. Of course. Something missing about a “dependency.” Felt like hitting a brick wall right away. Took forever just to figure out how to install that missing piece. Kept getting weird permission denied errors, had to google fixes like crazy.
Finally got the dependencies sorted after what felt like an eternity. Ran the command again… and waited. Crossed my fingers.
Watching the Magic (Mostly) Happen
Honestly, seeing it start churning through my files was pretty cool. The terminal just started spitting out lines:
- “Processing meeting_notes_*…”
- “Converting project_* to markdown…”
- “Extracting headings from chaos_*…”
It felt like watching a little robot clean my room. Slowly but surely, it was sorting things into new folders named after the main topic it pulled from each file. “Work_Projects,” “Personal,” “Ideas,” “Tech_Stuff.” Simple names, but way better than before.
Did it screw up? Oh yeah. It totally misfiled that recipe collection PDF – put it under “Tech_Stuff” because it saw the word “processor” a bunch of times (talking about food processors, obviously). Had to drag that folder over to “Personal” myself. Annoying, but not the end of the world.
The Final Verdict
Took maybe 30 minutes start to finish (including the dependency headache). Am I now sitting on top of a perfectly organized, immaculate note-taking system? Nope. But is it a thousand times better than the total landfill I had before? Absolutely.
I’ve actually started finding notes on purpose now, instead of just stumbling across them months later. That’s a win in my book. The setup was a pain, the results aren’t flawless magic… but it works well enough for me to keep using it. And honestly? For dealing with that level of initial mess, “well enough” feels pretty damn good.
